If you are moving from the old Colloquis IDE to the Visual Studio-based Windows Live Agents SDK, and you've never used Visual Studio, you may be a little lost.  This post aims to collect simple hints and tricks for agent developers new to working with Visual Studio.  This is just a start -- if you have any hints, please do comment, and later on we'll post a sequel. 

 

Also, this is by no means much of a guide to Visual Studio as a whole, and is really meant to get you started and oriented for agent-development tasks.  Also, it's not a guide for creating agents.  The first resource for using the new SDK is the Windows Live Agents SDK documentation.  You should start there before doing anything.

 

Here are some common menu locations for agent-development tasks:

 

Edit -> Find and Replace   ... Lots of options for searching through single or multiple files.  Regular expressions work!

View -> Solution Explorer ... This is rougly equivalent to the Explorer feature in the old IDE, and lets you see the project files in a tree view.

View -> Class View          ... Lets you see all the project's domains and packages as a flat list of classes.

View -> Error list             ... Displays compile errors and warnings.

View -> Output                ... Similar to the "Misc Debug" pane of the old IDE, displays compiler messages.

View -> Other Windows -> Conversation Window            ... Where you compile and talk to the agent.

View -> Other Windows -> Comprehension Info Window  ... Displays match scoring information.

Project -> Add DLS Item                ... Add datasources and other DLS items.

Project -> ProjectName Properties  ... Specify compile parameters like buddy id, filter, and command-line options.

Tools -> Windows Live Agents Tools -> Code Management              ... The SDK's interface to the Partner Hosting Infrastructure.

Tools -> Windows Live Agents Tools -> Request License Certificate  ... Get a new license cert.

Tools -> Windows Live Agents Tools -> Management Console          ... Launches the web management console within Visual Studio.

Tools -> Windows Live Agents Tools -> Update connections file        ... Attempts to update the connections file based on the content of your project.

Tools -> Windows Live Agents Tools -> Performance                       ... Various tools for measuring performance.

Tools -> Options ... Set things like tabs and syntax highlighting.

 

By default, the SDK will mount a filesystem in the Solution Explorer, which may affect performance if there are a lot of files, causing the editor to lag.  If this is the case, you can click "Show All Files" to remove the All Files view, and navigate to files through the Class View.  Editing will be a lot faster.  Set Show All Files to false by default at Tools -> Options -> Windows Live Agents SDK -> SDK Settings -> General -> "Show All Files on project open."

 

Keyboard Shorcuts 

As of right now, there isn't a keyboard shortcut for starting/stopping the agent in the Conversation Window.  However, here are some shorcuts you may find useful:

 

CTRL-K CTRL-C ... comment

CTRL-K CTRL-U ... uncomment

CTRL-ALT-L ... Solution Explorer

CTRL-TAB ... toggle through open windows

CTRL-Shift-<arrow key> ... move forward/backward by one word

 

Many other shortcuts are listed next to the menu items they correspond to.

 

One of the best things about Visual Studio is the flexibility it provides for laying out your environment.  Any window can be tabbed, docked, or floating, and you can drag everything around the way you like.  Right click a window title, or click the small arrow in the top of the pane, to see your options